Dua Lipa and Kylo Ren inspire baby name choices

When choosing a name for their baby lots of parents turn to books for inspiration, while others think of their favourite singer, actor of fictional character.

Last year it was singer Dua Lipa and Star Wars jedi Kylo Ren who were some of the biggest influences on parents' name choices.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the number of babies called Dua doubled last year, from 63 in 2017, to 126 in 2019 when the New Rules star first reached number one.

Kylo's popularity has been growing since the new Star Wars films started in 2015, with 67 Kylos in 2019 compared to 10 when The Force Awakens was released.

What do the names mean?

Dua

According to interviews she has given, Dua Lipa didn't actually like her name when she was younger because it was so unusual.

But says she grew to "enjoy" it as it meant she didn't have to come up with a catchy stage name to launch her singing career.

The name 'Dua' means "love" in Albanian.

Kylo

Interestingly Kylo isn't even the birth name of the Star Wars character, who was originally called Ben Solo.

He changed his name to Kylo after leaving the jedi and joining the evil First Order.

What are the naming trends?

Oliver and Olivia are still number one in England and Wales, with more than 8,000 babies named in 2019.

But despite holding on to the top spot there were less babies were named Olivia's in 2019 than the year before, with 4,082 Olivia's last year, compared with 4,598 in 2018.

Oliver, which has been the number on boys' name since 2013, fell from 5,390 to 4,392.

Meanwhile Alexa has fallen since the introduction of Amazon's Echo, down from 332 in 2016 to just 39 in 2019.

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